What makes Echo Park cool

Let’s see if I get the Calendar Weekend article on Echo Park cool right (“Bohemian rhapsody,” Oct. 24). Although musicians of note and color have been in the neighborhood forever, what’s really interesting is that white people from elsewhere with more money now have moved in and are actually playing musical instruments there. Because of that, “For the past couple of years, its musical life has been building toward critical mass.” Wow.

Amazingly, rents have gone up. And so have drink prices at the Short Stop, where the conversations seem far less interesting than when it was a “former hard-core cop bar,” or when Dodger players would pop in after a game. All this, and the article, is just too precious for words.

Mike Falcon

Los Angeles